Good apps for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

The new iPhones are here and reports indicate sales are brisk. The larger screens are beautiful, and require apps optimized to take full advantage of them.

Developers must be scrambling to do so, as updates are appearing in a steady stream with optimization for iOS 8 and the new iPhones.

The apps in this collection will run on any iPhone, but have all been updated for the big displays of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and to take advantage of features in iOS 8. You'll find apps for keeping up with current events, working with data, and new widgets for the iOS notification screen.

Vidgets

The ability to put widgets on the Today screen is new in iOS 8, and a useful feature. Apps that have been coded to include a widget automatically appear for inclusion on the notification shade.

Vidgets is a free app that offers a number of simple informational widgets for posting on the shade. There are clocks, calendars, weather widgets, and more. The battery level widget is particularly useful.

There is a paid version of Vidgets that adds the ability to customize the color of each widget. That seems to currently be the only extra feature of the paid version so the free one should be all you need.

Feedly

Feedly is a popular service for working with (and syncing) RSS feeds. It aggregates feeds into a river of news that makes it easy to keep up with even a lot of news sources.

The Feedly app is designed to make interacting with the service nice on the new iPhones. The river of news is presented in a format that shows a small thumbnail preview of the news item next to a summary of the article.

The app casts aside the typical scrolling of the list of articles in favor of a "stack" action that moves down the list one screen at a time. This makes going through a long list of news items fast and accurate.

Evernote

This is the Cadillac of note-taking apps, and the optimization for the new iPhones is first-rate. Every element of the interface is attractive, and the developers have put them all together to be easy to use while displaying as much as possible on the phone screen.

In addition to handling simple note-taking, information can be captured from the web, by voice, and with the iPhone camera.

The large screens of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus combined with the Evernote app make a useful tool for both work and play.

CNN

The CNN news organization has created an app that is marvelous to use. It works equally well in portrait and landscape orientations, and transitions between them without missing a beat.

The handling of video on the new iPhones is very well done, and especially nice on the iPhone 6 Plus in landscape. It makes it a breeze to keep up with current events, and developers should take a look at the CNN app to see how it is when it's done right.

Fantastical 2

Fantastical 2 is a long-time favorite calendar app on iOS, and the latest version is really good on the new iPhones. It presents a lot of information about the user's schedule on each screen without being too busy and overwhelming.

It presents a monthly overview above an agenda view in portrait, and transitions into a weekly view when rotated to landscape. This makes reviewing the schedule and entering new events very simple, especially considering the natural language entry ("Lunch with Bob on Tuesday at noon").

Six Clicks: Good apps for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

Good apps for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

The new iPhones are here and reports indicate sales are brisk. The larger screens are beautiful, and require apps optimized to take full advantage of them.

Developers must be scrambling to do so, as updates are appearing in a steady stream with optimization for iOS 8 and the new iPhones.

The apps in this collection will run on any iPhone, but have all been updated for the big displays of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and to take advantage of features in iOS 8. You'll find apps for keeping up with current events, working with data, and new widgets for the iOS notification screen.